HW The Case of the Egyptian Eye
by slytherinsal
Summary: This is my first attempt at an auror procedural story; Parody intentional. A trainee auror under the care of Moody learns about the seamier side of life; don't take it too seriously. i don't own any of the characters. i just borrowed them to play with.


_**this is a tribute to Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler with touches of Bogart, Bacall and Sidney Greenstreet plus tongue firmly in cheek reference to Morse….**_

**The Case of the Egyptian Eye**

There are those witches that look a million galleons, but when you see them you just know that it's because they've had those galleons of the poor saps they've come into contact with. The ones they've left broke – and broken.

And this witch was one of those who looked the best and was one of dirtiest and lowest ever. Face it, she was so low you could close a door on her, and without resorting to _alohamora_ she could shimmy right under the crack at the bottom and steal your morals right along with your wallet.

"They call her Kaili the Bard" said Alastor Moody laconically. He was training me to be an Auror; it was tough going, but I was getting there. He did not even growl at me too often now. The old Auror went on, "She has the voice of an angel, son, but don't be fooled. She probably stole it from one."

"Is – is she a Deatheater?" I asked. That, then, was for me the paradigm of evil. I was that innocent.

He gave a cynical, grunting laugh.

"Oh she's worse" he said "She's for sale to the highest bidder. No, not like THAT, you prurient little swab" he added as I blushed "She buys and sells information. Doesn't care how she gets it, who buys it, or how it gets used. And Powers help us, sometimes we buy."

That was a shock.

I had no chance to ask more on the subject for by then Kaili the Bard had sashayed over to our table. Mind, with the crush in the Hag's Arse, she could hardly move without a bit of sashaying. It did all sorts of interesting things to most of what she kept in her tight scarlet robe.

"Hello Alastor" she said.

He was not lying about the voice. It was pure gold, chocolate drowning in honey.

He grunted; it might have been a greeting.

"What can I do for you and your friend today, Alastor?" she said. She gave me the sort of look that would have left my knees as helpless as if she had cast the jelly-legs jinx on me if I had not been forewarned.

I managed to keep control of my knees.

Barely.

"Just passing through, Kaili" grunted Moody, discouragingly. "Showing the boy about the Umbrous Lane complex. Run along, there's a good girl."

She gave me that Amortentia look again.

"Well I'm always willing to introduce new faces about" she said.

"Scram" said Moody.

She laughed, a delicious, melting laugh that made me squirm; but she scrammed.

"Of all the bars in all the world she would have to come into this one" said Moody in disgust.

The Hag's Arse is about the most insalubrious place I had ever seen in my young and sheltered life. It is probably about the most insalubrious wizarding inn in Britain…. Though there is the Green Frog in Nottingham; but I digress. It was originally, as I've found out since, the Hag's Head in mockery of the Hog's Head; until the inn sign was repainted so badly that some wag suggested that it looked more like the backside of a hag, and the nose a turd hanging off it. The name stuck; and the sign now depicts a shapely hag mooning.

"Well what do you think she's doing here?" I asked "IS she after….what we are?"

Moody considered.

"Possible" he grunted "Last I knew she was working for Kordach, the goblin crime lord; NOT that such a description can be proved. He's even more slippery than Lucius Malfoy. AND owns half the ministry" he added in disgust.

I knew Moody well enough by now to reckon that it was the morals of the ministry that disgusted him more than those of some goblin crime boss. Goblins have to eat too, and the system that encourages second class citizens tends to criminalise them too.

But we are not paid to make social comment or fix the ills of society that cause crime; we are paid to arrest dangerous criminals. Which did not extend to the young half goblin whore in the corner who was clumsily confunding her client; she was small potatoes.

"Will this Kordach be after….. IT?" I asked.

"No" said Moody "Kordach is too careful of his own safety; he doesn't touch things that big. He has his code too" he added with grudging respect "Doesn't touch muggle slave trafficking and has actually turned people in to us for doing it. Doesn't smuggle live snidgets either; and doesn't go for Quidditch match fixing. He goes for such things as smuggling and he owns half the brothels in London. And I don't say that Lucius Malfoy doesn't own most of the rest" he added.

Moody loathed Malfoy so I took that with a pinch of salt.

IT was an ancient artefact – or so it was said. We had received word in the Aurors' Office that it had been smuggled into the country and there was to be bidding on it from a number of shady characters. The whisper was that it had been made by the almost mythical Ancient Egyptian wizard and engineer Imhotep, around the time the pyramids were being built – under his direction if the tales were true. That was just so crazily old; I did not think that old Binns even could imagine back that far, though the ghostly professor looks as though he might be old enough to remember it.

It might not even be that old; but it was certainly an ancient Egyptian artefact and it was said to not only focus power in the way a wand focuses power, but also to magnify it.

You can guess that there might be plenty of people wanting to get their hands on THAT piece of kit; and maybe it had been no coincidence that we had caught sight of the distinctive pale hair of Lucius Malfoy in Umbrous Place, hastily going on into Umbrous Place North rather than entering the Hag's Arse when he caught sight of the equally distinctive figure of Alastor Moody. Of course, he might be inspecting some of his property – Lucius Malfoy is one of the biggest landowners in wizarding Britain – but if he was checking the noisome apartment blocks he owned in this poor part of wizarding London it would be the first time ever.

"What's it actually LOOK like?" I asked Moody curiously.

He grunted sourly.

"I've heard it described as an eye" he said, turning his own madly whirling prosthetic eye on me. As always it made me feel giddy and a little queasy. He added, "But if you ask me it's more likely to be all my eye and Betty Martin; a hoax" and he laughed at his own joke. "Still just in case, we must maintain constant vigilance."

Moody never was a great one for Ancient Runes; more an action man than one likely to pore over old tomes. The idea of an eye however made sense; the eye of Horus, a protective symbol of great power; and a determinant too when writing the name of the god Osiris. Suddenly I found that I was afraid of this artefact.

-/-

Moody's good eye narrowed.

"See that half troll over there?" he indicated with the merest nod of the head. I saw.

"The badly dressed one with the Falmouth Falcon button on his collar?" I said.

"That's the one" he nodded "He's the bodyguard and right hand man of Vernon Rhodes StDenis; a pretentious name for a pretentious man. Here"

He used his wand surreptitiously to cast an illusion into a puddle of beer that was acting like a mirror to facilitate the illusion. I saw a fat, ugly man with a suave expression and dressed just on the vulgar side of gentlemanly. I could imagine him being oleaginously avuncular and impressing impressionable young girls who later awoke to find themselves involved in the sorts of dark rites that require virgins.

I shuddered.

"He looks like that new female in the muggle office – what's her name, Dolores Umbridge" I said.

"I think they both spring from the Selwyn line" said Moody "Bad blood in there if you ask me; but inefficient and fluffily malicious females in the ministry are not our concern. She's been shunted from department to department since she left school; I doubt she'll last many more years. StDenis has a low cunning and the ability to move in social circles well above his birth; he's even been to the odd do at Malfoy Manor."

"Along with the other riffraff like He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" I ventured a joke.

"More than likely – if we could but prove it" grunted Moody. "James Potter had his eye on the fellow but getting married has addled his wits; another good man lost for love. Lacking in constant vigilance!"

If we had only known then.

-/-

We questioned some people; or rather, Moody questioned those people likely to know anything and let me try my hand at the small fry.

They knew nothing and wanted to keep it that way.

Moody's witnesses knew scarcely more; though I did get to meet the notorious Kordach.

He was a dapper little cockney goblin dressed quietly – especially for a goblin – in black trousers, dark purple tunic and yellow spats and gloves with a silver grey hat with a sharp point.

"Let's cut to the chase, Mr Moody" he said, giving me a civil nod as well "We all knows wot fing it is you're arter; and it ain't somefink I'd 'ave anything ter do with, swelp me it ain't. Word is it came in on the reg'lar portkey service from Calais; and who the courier was, nobody ain't sayin'. But I did hear word that it got half-inched somewhere on the way; and whoever paid to have if brought in ain't so happy neether. Them wot expected it in the 'Ag's Arse is doomed ter disappointment, Mr Moody; the ruddy fing's gorn. Caput. Flown off into the sunset. Not very encouraging-like, but best I can do, innit."

Moody grunted. It was a noise I was hearing a lot to day. No chance the old man would be likely to fetch up today in the Leaky Cauldron and tell stories over butterbeer.

We went back to the office. It was all we could do for now.

-/-

I don't quite know what I expected when Moody hauled me out of bed to answer a summons by floo at Oh-too-early hours. It was four o'clock; I looked at the clock to check that horrid fact. I dressed, grumbling to myself, and met him in the yard behind the Hag's Head.

Nobody would ever hear the thrilling voice of Kaili the Bard again; second mouths like the one she was wearing don't do a lot of speaking.

"Poor little bitch knew something" said Moody softly. "And I'd have thought she'd be one to have the self preservation to maintain constant vigilance too…."

I gave him a sideways glance. Had my untouchable mentor actually been more affected by the beauty of Kaili than he cared to mention? I decided not to ask. I would only earn myself a blistering retort about cheek. I would never know how he felt; but he was the sort of man who would not even tell you his first name if it were not a matter of public record on the school files.

Moody had his wand out.

"Observe the way I use the Revellaspell for forensic thaumoturgy" he said. "We can see that she has had spells cast on her that have wracked her with pain – here, and here on the telltales of the coloured lines. It is a reasonable assumption that it was the cruciatus curse."

"Was it done here?" I asked "Surely her screams would have been heard?"

I really WAS that innocent.

"Boy" said Moody patiently "Just across the way are alleys like Darkvale and Shadow Court. Where most of the pimps and prostitutes hang out. The odd few screams of agony are NOT going to turn out any neighbours for fear of finding themselves the targets of those who like hurting as their entertainment. There are those besides Deatheaters who get their jollies from hurting others; it isn't only the pure blooded and wealthy who have a monopoly on being nasty. Only we don't get to poke our noses in because the ministry doesn't actually care how many of the poor kill or maim each other. And you never heard me say so unless we get a serious change of government."

I was appalled.

"He-who-must-not-be-named must be a priority I suppose" I ventured.

He sniffed.

"Oh indeed; and constant vigilance over his Deatheaters is vital. But if you learn nothing else from me, learn that depravity can be nurtured in more than one type of soil; and that until this is addressed at the roots it will permeate all society with its cloying stench of decay."

I had never had Moody down for a Herbology analogy; but I took the point. I could not then see the likelihood that society MIGHT ever change.

He examined the wound on her neck, waving his wand over it.

"Standard silver knife, could come from any potioneering store" he said "I'd say from the angle she was held from behind, probably by the hair – there are hairs here that have been wrenched out – and cut by a right handed person – see how it goes down from left to right – by someone much taller than her."

"Like a half troll" I said brightly.

"Yeah" said Moody. "I'll question the innkeeper; you start knocking up the neighbours – in case anyone is ready to testify. Be light soon; they'll be getting up for work."

Factory workers in places like this worked long hours I knew; this neighbourhood had some eighty percent population of goblins and they worked in such places as Warrington Springs and the firework factory – a job that killed them slowly and painfully – and the locksmith's place. And the human workers straightened and fitted twigs for the broom factory that was here, making items none of them would ever afford. I got on my way.

And as I expected the majority of the occupants had heard nothing, seen nothing, and wished me in Hades. I was at the last door on one side of the street, ready to go back down the other side when I felt the _stupefy_ spell take me in the small of my back. It was sloppy; and I had time to imagine a big dark pit opening in front of me before I dived right in. I never hit bottom.

-/-

"You idiot! Haven't I warned you to have constant vigilance?" Moody's voice awoke me, along with the pungent potion he had poured between my lips. I coughed and sat up, wisely refraining from saying 'only about a dozen times every day'.

It was NOT a standard revivifier; I felt better actually than I might have expected but the taste was the vilest. I coughed again.

"What's IN that?" I demanded "The old socks of Imhotep himself?"

Moody gave a chuckle.

"If it is, and that's what it takes to move you then it was worth it" he said. "I don't suppose you got anything useful? Or do you think someone you had spoken to wanted to take you down?"

I shook my head, marvelling that it did not hurt. My gut did though.

"It came from the other side of the lane; I hadn't got around to knocking there" I said.

He grunted in some satisfaction.

"All right; so someone did NOT want you knocking. Go stand as you were standing when you were hexed."

I did as I was told. I knew he could pick up the spot on my back where the jinx had hit with wand work; and figure out an approximate angle of fire. The old bastard really WAS that good.

He walked back to the house door he suspected.

His knock was thunderous; and it was opened by a young girl of indeterminate race so mixed was she.

"I ain't done nuttin'" she whined.

"There's a large bloody footprint on your floor" said Moody "You had a guest. I just want to know about him."

"I ain't done nuttin'" she whined again "Strike me I ain't. 'E weren't nuttin' t' do wiv me. I ain't never seen him before and I wouldn't reckernise 'im if I seen him agyne."

"Don't you want to have him arrested so he can't threaten you again?" I asked

She spat at me and shut the door on Moody's foot. Fortunately for him it was the wooden one.

"Idiot" said Moody "These poor bastards are too scared to talk to us; the only way we can ever get information is indirectly. If we can only lay He-who-must-not-be-named low, we shall have the chance to deal with other, less horrific criminals….who probably bring as much horror to the lives of some of these poor devils as the Deatheaters do to any of muggle blood. The murderer lay low there – we were on the scene quickly, thanks to an anonymous tipoff – but does not LIVE there. But that footprint – a half troll it is. What do you deduce?"

"That Vernon StDenis had Kaili killed" I said, feeling clever.

He rolled his eyes with a sigh. The effect on the magical one was most alarming.

"And you make no deductions WHY StDenis had her killed?" he asked.

"Er…. He wanted the Eye and she knew where it was?" I tried.

He sighed again.

"Why do I suspect that you had most of your essays for Horace Slughorn returned with 'insufficient answer for any meaningful mark to be given' written on them!" he said in exasperation.

I felt my ears burning. It had been a comment I had seen in Professor Slughorn's florid red penmanshipe.

"I er… he was one of the bidders and he paid her to get more information and she failed to come up trumps?" I tried again.

"Not likely" said Moody "One does not torture an information broker for failing. Only for lying. If he suspected she was lying to him that would be a different matter. But I don't think StDenis is the type to bid on it. He's a broker of information himself; and he controls through cashflow. He is a usurer, a smuggler and probably a slaver. He might want to buy it for one purpose only – to sell on. By the time it's coming to auction is too late for him. We saw a number of buyers in there of course as well; who would be likely to buy at auction."

"Er….we did?"

I had not.

He sighed.

"Borgin was there of Borgin and Burke; and Burke himself was lurking in the shadows. They may be partners but either one would cast the killing curse on the other for a profit. Lucius Malfoy ducked out of being there, but there was a slinking little wizard I fancy is an agent of his. The Grubbe brothers were there – they may not be so upmarket as Borgin and Burke's, operating as they do out of Obscura Alley but they DO advertise such things as dark items for hire; and I'm fairly sure they also procure virgins on demand for sacrifice. They would want it to hire out; Borgin and Burke would want to sell it at a mark up. Malfoy just wants it for his own nefarious deeds."

I squirmed uncomfortably at all his quick eyes had picked up in that horrid little tavern. I still had a lot to learn.

"Sorry" I said. He patted my shoulder.

"Cheer up lad; you're learning" he said "And a week ago you'd scarcely heard of Obscura Alley, never mind the Umbrous Lane complex."

I nodded. It was true. Obscura Alley had been a name to me; a place rivalling – it was said – Knockturn Alley. And when I finally got there, I was pleasantly surprised as I walked through the wall of the railway bridge in Dalling Road. It was dingy, but more like the dwellings at the wrong end of Diagon Alley where most of the bank employees lived. Of course the other end of Obscura Alley was dingier yet and had a bad feel; and then things went downhill after exiting onto Ravenscourt Road and crossing it to re-enter the wizarding space that housed Umbrous Lane and the myriad alleys that crept menacingly off it.

"So what interest would StDenis have?" I asked.

"I'd bet my magical eye that he was the one who had it imported" said Moody. "And either he suspected Kaili of having gained enough information to have the courier intercepted – or she WAS the courier."

I nodded. That made a lot of sense.

We went back to Obscura Alley for a beer; the 'Erumpant and Castle' was a pleasanter place to drink than the 'Hag's Arse' even though we were looked at suspiciously and given a wide berth. That is the lot of the Auror; no locals will ever give any Auror time of day.

Watch wizards had after all taken Kaili's body back to the office to be stored in a preserving cabinet in case we needed to do a fuller thaumotological autopsy on her.

-/-

I must say the last person I expected to sweep in and sit beside Moody and me was Lucius Malfoy. He scowled.

Moody scowled right back.

Malfoy forced a pleasant look onto his face. I think it needed a crowbar and locomotor charms to get it in place.

"Strangely, Moody, I think we are more or less after the same thing" said Malfoy "The girl's killer."

Moody raised an eyebrow.

"I shouldn't have thought she was your sort, Lucius" he said.

"She was working for me" Malfoy spoke abruptly "And I object to my tools being….manhandled."

"You mean by anyone but yourself" said Moody. "I suppose you paid her to steal the Eye?" he asked, hoping to trap Malfoy into an admission.

"Funnily enough" said Malfoy "I engaged her to find out as much about it as she could. I was not convinced it was genuine; but I would have put in an honest bid if I believed it so. She would not have stolen it; she was the courier. She had her code. A crook without a code, as I understand it, is usually given a name he or she would rather avoid."

"What's that, Mr Malfoy?" I asked. He gave me a mocking smile.

"The LATE whoever" he said. I shivered. He nodded to Moody. "If you get enough information to give you a clue and you're not allowed to follow up perhaps you might see your way…"

"That I will NOT" said Moody with a snap. "You won't get any excuse to undertake vigilantism on my watch, Lucius."

Malfoy shrugged.

"Then I had better wish you the best of luck fulfilling your function and finding out who did it, hadn't I?" he said.

"WAS it genuine?" I blurted out.

Malfoy gave me another of those mocking smiles.

"Your young colleague has the charm of directness" he said to Moody "Yes it was; or at least it was when she picked it up. But apparently StDenis unpacked it, used the Revellaspell and made like a crup on alihotsy, according to the spy I had watching him. So one rather suspects she had it switched on her. Which suggests a moderately competent wizard or witch; switching spells don't come that easily."

"You're pretty good at them" growled Moody.

"I am; but it wasn't me. I still want it" said Malfoy. "Well, well; I leave you to it. Do try not to be QUITE as paranoid as your trainer, young puppy."

He turned and strode away. I was angry.

"I don't like him" I said.

"Join most other decent people in England" growled Moody "Still, you got more out of him by directness than I might have done with fencing for hours. Even if it was only to have the chance to bait you a little."

"Do you believe him? That he did not steal it?"

"I'd like to say I never believe a word that bastard says; but for one reason I do. If he had stolen it already there would be no need for him and his agent to be hanging around the Hag's Arse" said Moody. "If you ask me the thing is well away in the collection of some dark wizard. End of THAT thread; though I'd like to get hold of the murdering bastard who killed that girl."

"If she's a crook herself, does it matter?" I asked.

"She has worked for me. For pay I admit; but she has worked for me. I wouldn't put it in the same words Malfoy does but that means something" said Moody. "Though we'll be officially off the case. She isn't important enough for anyone to care about; so I shall mark it a hobby case and do what I can. You don't need to be associated with it; in fact you had better get back to the office and write it up and mark it done with."

I capitulated.

He was not a man to argue with.

-/-

I suppose it was stupid to go on my own to see StDenis.

You have to remember that I was very young then, half trained and thought myself smart and better trained than I was. It was because I was fond of Moody in my own way; and I did not want him suffering over questioning the fellow. I was a romantic in those days too and was convinced he had felt more for Kaili than as a sometime employee.

After all I had fancied her like mad. So maybe it was because I wanted revenge for her as much as wanting to spare a colleague.

The rights and wrongs of it are all long past; but whatever my motives I found myself knocking on the door of the large house in Orme Court that belonged to Mr StDenis.

My badge got me in to see him.

He smiled genially. I should as soon have been smiled at by a Hungarian Horntail but I gave him a nod.

"I'll come to the point, Mr StDenis" I said "I know that the Eye was switched when it was in the possession of the courier. You have a worthless imitation. To track down the Eye I need to know what she told you."

"My DEAR young fellow!" he said.

If a vampire caught over the bloody body of his victim could be said to look ingenuous, so too did StDenis.

And then that dark pit opened again and I was diving once more into its remorseless arms towards a bottom that did not exist.

-/-

"You BLITHERING idiot!"

I came to again to Moody's voice. He was pouring the same gut-rotting potion down my neck. It still worked.

I was a trifle surprised by my surroundings.

I was beside the Serpentine in Hyde Park and I was wet.

I also had a bubble charm still on my head.

"What happened?" I asked, rather foolishly. "The last thing I remember was talking to StDenis; I suppose his half troll stupefied me again."

"It doesn't take much; nothing much in there to stupefy" said Moody, tartly. "A FULL troll could have done it if you ask me! It's a good job the Office has a dangerclock for all the aurors; yours shot from 'walking into danger' to 'in deadly peril' and if I hadn't had a diviner on hand to find you by your ritual blood sample you'd be beyond the veil by now, my lad, and out of the reach of my wrath."

"Oh" I said, feeling foolish. "Did they try to drown me then?"

"Well what do you think? Doesn't take many powers of deduction to work that out, does it?" said Moody scathingly. "I found you by spell and stuck a bubble head on you before using levicorpus to get you out of there; and bloody hard it was because you had a weight increasing charm on you to weigh you down. By the time it wore off and the gases of decomposition brought you to the surface AND the muggle police had finished sodding about with your body it would have been too late for any decent forensic thaumoturgy. Don't EVER do anything like that again. Constant vigilance!"

"No sir. I'm very sorry" I said. "And I'm sorry I didn't find anything out."

"Well there's no great loss without some small gain" said Moody "By attempting to kill you we can at least pin attempted murder of an Auror on StDenis; because we'll never get the girl's murder to stick. Because the evidence is dodgy and the Wizgamot reckon they have more important cases on their hands than a girl who was a crook who was killed by another of her ilk" he sighed.

It really was more kicks than chocolate being an Auror.

-/-

And in the end Vernon Rhodes StDenis never came up for trial.

He was murdered messily in his own Bayswater home.

And Mr Lucius Malfoy briefly left the country and returned from Calais looking like the cat that had got the cream.

Whether there were any connections between those events or not I have no proof; but I shouldn't mind betting that Malfoy got StDenis to tell him what Kaili had said – that the fat oaf had not believed – and followed it up to find the Eye.

Which places the wretched thing in the hands of the enemy; all because Moody could not move far enough and fast enough because the authorities did not care about an obscure young crook. But it is the tiny things that can alter even the greatest things; for the want of a nail the shoe was lost and so on.

And whether we would regret that or not I could not then know.


End file.
